Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard Group and creator of the index fund, dies at age 89

Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard and a great investor in many people’s’ eyes, has sadly passed away.

Thought this may be of interest to people, particularly if you use the Vanguard platform and subscribe to the buy-and-hold strategy which Bogle favoured.

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Ahhh Bogle, what a legend.

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I’ve just come across a thread on Twitter which explains some of the impact he had on investing / investors:

Jack Bogle passed away.

If his is a new name for you: when you retire, he’ll have been directly responsible for about $1 of every $2 you receive from your investment returns or pension, by negotiating down by 95% fees the financial industry charged for no good reason.

The fee is the management fee for mutual funds, which were clustered in the ~2% region when they were principally actively managed by stock pickers who purported to deliver above-market performance.

This promise was not true.

Bogle popularized a better product costing 10 bps [0.1%].

The difference between 2% and 10bps is approximately a quarter of the returns to capitalism, which compounded over a 35 year working career work out to about 2X difference.

(Being somewhat handwavy on the math in the interest of general legibility.)

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For an interesting discussion with him, and it’s from not too long ago, there’s a really good Freakonomics episode called ‘The Stupidest Thing You Can Do With Your Money”.

It’s also interesting that he actually didn’t like some parts of ETFs and the fact that can be traded all day and become susceptible to traders. Also that he’s not a fan of niche ETFs which might track specific sectors or commodities - he preferred broad ones. This part is covered in the ETF Story Bloomberg podcast.

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Just read the Vanguard press release plus some FT coverage and it’s safe to say he’s left a real legacy for all stock market investors:

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